A new song

By Nancy Sheehan TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

Sunday

Oct 31, 2010 at 3:01 AMOct 31, 2010 at 4:07 PM

The vintage organ at The Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts is known as a Mighty Wurlitzer, even though it doesn't look so imposing on stage. But that's just the console up there. It is the unseen parts of the instrument that earn it a true mightiness designation: workings that stand two stories high, including 2,400 pipes from pencil size to 16 feet tall, all hidden in two chambers behind the walls of the theater. Don Phipps, the man who brought the organ to the Hanover, knows what that kind of pipe power can do.

“When it's played really loud, it'll part your hair,” he said.

Phipps likes to quote an old theater advertisement to describe the organ's auditory audaciousness: “Trained medical personnel will be available to assist those patrons overcome by the magnitude of the sound.”

Organist Jonathan Ortloff, winner of the American Theatre Organ Society's 2008 Young Theatre Organist Competition, will take the Hanover's Mighty Wurlitzer for a whirl Nov. 5 for a special event called “An Evening of Majestic Proportions.” Hanover benefactor Mary C. DeFeudis will host the show, which also will feature Boston-based performers Kathy St. George and Brian De Lorenzo. Phipps will be presented with the theater's Encore Award, which recognizes people who have made a major impact in the theater's success and, through that the impact, on the revitalization of downtown Worcester.

Phipps, 78, a retired engineer who said he has been an “organ nut” since the age of 5, began building the Mighty Wurlitzer when he retired at 56. Working with his brother, John Phipps, and another helper, it took six and a half years to piece it together from parts culled from 20 different organs. “Years ago when John and I heard that a theater was coming down that had an organ in it we'd show up with a big truck and a few hundred dollar bills and we ended up with an awful lot of organ parts,” Phipps said.

The pieces were assembled at a shop Phipps owns in New Bedford. There were performances with as many as 250 people squeezed into the shop.

“Then, getting older as we all do, I began looking for a home for the organ because I wanted to it to outlast me,” he said. He looked into four places. The first three didn't work out. “I was aware of this theater, but it wasn't in an active stage of rehabilitation,” he said. When it looked like the renovation was really going to happen, Phipps approached Hanover Executive Director Troy Siebels.

“We made a deal, which was sealed on a handshake three and a half years ago, and we've just been working ever since,” Phipps said. If the theater were to buy an organ of this magnitude it would cost about $1.5 million, he said.

The installation of the organ started just as the theater renovations did, with Phipps and his brother driving 73 miles each way from the New Bedford area to Worcester four days a week. “My brother takes a long time to wake up and I'm no good in the evening so I drive up and he drives back,” Phipps said.

The process began in the middle of winter with Phipps, his brother and a friend, Bruce Hager, leading a team of six or seven intermittent helpers. “It's been a lot of work,” Hager said. “When we started, the building was still under construction. Working down in the basement, Don was soldering in 14-inch sections of wind line together in dust and debris and very low light.” The wind lines funnel air from a massive blower in the theater basement up into the organ pipes high above.

The Wurlitzer Organ Company's total production of theater organs was 2,200 between 1915 and 1940, when they ceased production, Phipps said. “In that entire time they only built about 20 instruments, which were as large as this one,” he said. The theater organs' sound effect capabilities made them especially important in the days of silent movies.

Among sounds the Hanover organ can replicate are castanets, sleigh bells, a steamboat whistle and the clip-clop of horses' hooves. The vast range of sounds at an organist's disposal meant that one person could have nearly the musical clout of a whole orchestra.

Then “talkies” came to theaters in the late 1920s and, eventually, the organs stopped getting played. In many cases, the theaters fell into disuse and were torn down. The Hanover organ comprises parts from such once-noble theaters as the Strand Theatre in Quincy, the Scollay Square Olympia in Boston and the Uptown Theater in Chicago.

It took about 1,000 man-hours to install the organ, piece by piece, at the Hanover. “The work is sort of demanding, but you get out of bed and just can't wait to get down here and go to work,” Phipps said. There were challenges that made the project seem more like “Phipps' Folly,” but those incidents were few.

“Overall, it was a wonderful experience,” he said. “It's very labor-intensive and you have to be very devoted to the project, but every time I hear it played I immediately reconvince myself it was worth all the work.”

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